Abstract:

Four studies investigated the mapping mechanism and its characteristics of the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts. Adopting the Stroop Paradigm, study 1 found that there was no significant difference in the participants’ reaction time to the letter presented at the top or bottom of the screen after they finished the judgments of moral words. No effect of word types was found for spatial location. Study 2 was a consciously forced-choice task. The participants were first asked to read out the (im)moral words appearing at the center of the screen, then to select the Greek nonsense words presented at the top or bottom of the screen. Study 2 showed: the participants tended to select the Greek nonsense words presented at the top of the screen after reading out the moral words; when they read the words with immoral senses, they preferred to select the nonsense words presented at the bottom of the screen. Study 3 also used the Stroop Paradigm, which showed that after the space judgment of “上” (shàng, up), the participants’ reaction time to judgment of the subsequent moral words was significantly shorter than the immoral ones. The reaction time to the immoral words was significantly shorter than the moral words when the required task of judgment changed into “下” (xià, down). Study 4 tested the impact of spatial location on the judgment of human morality. The result showed that the participants were more inclined to think the pictures showing at the top of the screen moral and the ones at the bottom immoral. The results of the four studies suggest that the mapping mode of vertical space metaphor of moral concepts is flexible and bidirectional: it may map from the source domain to the target domain, or in a reverse order. However, the mapping power of the two directions is not balanced. The metaphor connection between moral concepts and vertical space positions may be caused by the combination of morality and valence.

Key words: metaphor of moral concepts, vertical spatial, bidirectional mapping, information asymmetry between source domain and target domain, fan effect